The present invention relates to culinary devices and more specifically to a motorized fork having the capability to controllably spin and stop, in one hand of the user for the accumulation of a stringy food product.
Conventionally, it has been the practice to eat spaghetti or other types of stringy food with a fork placed in the hand of a user where the hand is turned or twisted to accumulate a food product onto the tines of a conventional fork. Once the accumulation of the food has been achieved, the fork is then lifted and the food is consumed from a collected position on the end of the fork. The conventional fork consists of a lower end having tines and a handle that is held by the user. There are no separate or removable parts, or any movement between the parts, the only spinning motion is accomplished by manipulation by the user.
In the culinary art, there have been several attempts made to employ a spinning arrangement for fork tines. U.S. Pat. No. 2,841,869 to Levine and U.S. Pat. No. 2,602,996 to Piche disclose manually operated spaghetti forks that appear to eliminate the wrist motion to twist the fork. These designs appear to cause problems and difficulties by requiring the user to employ great manual dexterity or to employ fingers to accomplish the spinning motion and subsequent stoppage of the tines. The spinning provisions of these forks had to be held in place manually and then locked in place relative to the handle before lifting the food from the plate. Thus, use of the aforementioned designs required either a great deal of patience or unrealistic manual dexterity with one hand operation.
These problems lead to the development of motorized pasta forks. One such example is U.S. Pat. No. 5,062,211 to Di Amico which discloses the use of a motor and gearing to drive tines integrally connected to a rotatable shaft in a twisting motion. The tines are not removable from the handle and can present a difficulty cleaning the fork. Also, a push-button switch appears to start and stop the rotation of the tines, however, the user is left to determine when to stop the rotation. This may be caused in part because the tines end up out of position. Thus, the user may be left with unmanageable pasta strings hanging from the end of the tines as it is raised from the plate to be consumed. There is no provision for automatically stopping the twisting motion of the tines.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,589,009 to Miscavich et al. discloses a spaghetti fork having a motor, a handle, and a removable rotating fork. The entire fork rotates and accululates spaghetti without a guide or other containment. The fork stops rotating when a switch is released. Thus, this device also relies on manual actuation to stop accumulation, and users may have difficulty gathering a neat ball of spaghetti because they cannot stop the fork from rotating in a timely manner or the tines may be out of position. The elderly and persons lacking manual dexterity may have difficulty in using the above devices.
There is a need for a motorized culinary device that provides for automatic stoppage of a spinning fork""s motion. There is also a need for a rotating fork which regulates the amount of food collected on the tines by provision of a guide. Thus, creating a substantially neat ball of stringy food without messy strings. There is also a need for a motorized culinary device that provides for a user to set a predetermined number of rotations of a rotating fork.
The present invention is directed to a culinary device having an automatically controlled stop system and a multiple part fork assembly that overcomes the problems in the prior art.
One aspect of the present invention includes a hand held culinary device for consumption of a stringy food product. The device includes a handle body having a free end and a tool end. A motor disposed inside of the handle body engages a gearing system. The motor is actuated by a switch activated by a user. In this manner, the fork receives rotary motion from the gearing system, via a drive shaft. An automatic stop system is provided for terminating the rotary motion of the fork, after a predetermined number of revolutions after the switch is actuated or at predetermined position with respect to the tool end.
In another aspect of the invention, the fork assembly on the tool end of the handle includes a fork assembly comprising a stationary member and a rotating member. The rotating member rotates relative to the stationary member about a longitudinal axis of the handle body. The stationary member acts as a guide to regulate the amount of pasta collected on the rotating member.
In a third aspect of the present invention, a pasta fork has a bi-planar fork assembly for accumulation of a food product. The fork assembly includes a stationary plane and an inner rotating plane formed by the fork components. A stopping system generally stops the inner rotating plane substantially coincident with the stationary plane. This provides the user with a substantially uniform eating surface once the food product is accumulated.
In a fourth aspect of the present invention, a fork assembly comprises an outer fork and an inner fork. In one aspect, the outer fork has tines that are stationary with respect to the inner fork. The inner fork rotates within the tines of the outer fork. In another aspect, the outer fork is adapted to rotate substantially around the tines of the inner fork and the inner fork is stationary with respect to the rotatable outer fork.
The above and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will be readily apparent and fully understood from the following detailed description of preferred embodiments, taken in connection with the appended drawings.